There's one surprising thing about Ford spending $200,000 on a Tesla Model X

Ford CEO Mark Fields recently visited Business Insider's office,
and he said some interesting things about how the automaker
learns from its competitors.

"We do teardowns of all major competitive vehicles," Fields said
at the time in response to a question about whether the company
would dismantle the new Tesla Model X SUV in the same way it took
apart the Model S sedan.

"I'm a big believer that you should never shut yourself off to
learning," he said.

One thing: Ford didn't drive a particularly hard bargain — it
paid $212,000 in total, once it got finished with taxes and title
in Michigan.

When Fields met with BI, he quipped that the company would
always "negotiate to get a good deal" when buying cars for
teardowns.

This all occurred in the context of Field echoing an
entertaining comment he made about the Model S on an earnings
call in 2014: "We have driven the Model S, torn it
down, put it back together, and driven it again — we're very
familiar with that product," he said.

So why does Ford do this in the first place? "We learn
things about technology, and we learn things about costs," Fields
told Business Insider. "And in many cases we can say that we do
that better, and in some cases we say, 'Oh my gosh, here's a neat
idea, how do we adopt that into our process?'"

Tesla gets a lot of attention for its innovative, high-tech
electric vehicles, but Ford competes globally in numerous
segments and needs to keep pace with everyone. The carmaker is
always looking to keep pace with new design and engineering
challenges.

Fields also told BI that Ford was also rolling out
over-the-air, or OTA, software updates; it's part of the new Sync
3 infotainment system the company has used since 2007 and
developed originally with Microsoft. Sync Connect is a modem-base
addition to a system that is undergirded by BlackBerry software.

"It's coming," Fields said.

Tesla has delighted owners with OTA updates that can make a
Model S seem like a new car literally overnight. For example,
owners with vehicles equipped for Autopilot semiautonomous
driving woke up after the update was released last year to find
their cars ready to drive themselves.

Major automakers are now moving in this direction. General
Motors will be using OTA updates in a limited manner. They're
unlikely to be quite as ambitious as Tesla, still a small company
that can push the envelope on technology.

The big players in the industry have been happy to observe
CEO Elon Musk's experiments and follow them when they make
sense.

And in Ford's case, it looks like the
company really wanted to check out the Model
X.